


The Avengers PSAs: COVID-19 Pandemic Response

by Eiiri



Category: COVID-19 - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, real world news
Genre: COVID-19, Gen, I am doing my part to help using the Avengers as my mouthpiece, PSAs, The Avengers address real world issues, my mom is a pandemic responder so I have a lot of awareness and some insider info, this is how I'm processing this situation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23257849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eiiri/pseuds/Eiiri
Summary: The world is in danger.The Avengers, being superheroes, are doing what they can to help, and they want you to do your part too!Or, I wrote the Avengers doing a series of PSAs in the hopes that people will actually listen to Steve Rogers telling them to stay home, cover their cough, and wash their hands.
Comments: 44
Kudos: 47





	1. Prologue: We Need To Do Something

**Author's Note:**

> My mother is a pandemic responder--she hasn't had a day off in weeks and is regularly working 12+ hour days doing emergency response for the COVID-19 outbreak.
> 
> Through her, I know a lot more than the average rando on the street about the reality of the situation, how worried most people really should be, and what we all should be doing to improve the situation for ourselves and our communities.
> 
> I'm using the Power Of Fanfic!(TM) to convey these things I think people need to be told and maybe lighten the mood a little with the fantasy of a world in which we get our PSAs from our favorite superheroes.
> 
> (If you happen to have photoshop skills and want to make some PSA posters of the Avengers, that would be awesome, btw.)

“I can't keep listening to this.” Wanda levered herself up from the couch and went to wave a hand in front of the bottom of the TV, shutting off the news. It had been all coronavirus all the time for days now. She turned back to see all the rest of the Avengers arrayed around the compound common room, still staring at the now-blank screen.

Steve had his arms crossed over a pillow, hugging it to his chest. “We need to do something.”

“And what exactly do you suggest we do that we haven't already, Grandpa?” Tony asked from his perch on the arm of the other couch. “We've all quarantined ourselves here, Pep's got all of S.I. either teleworking or on paid leave, we're working on converting a bunch of our production over to start churning out PPE and medical equipment. It's a virus, you can't go punch it.”

“At this point,” Clint griped, “people being stupid is at least as much of a problem as the virus itself.”

“If people won't take this seriously, take the necessary precautions, listen to the CDC and follow their guidelines, we can't contain the spread,” Bruce agreed. “And if we can't contain the spread, we can't get the situation under control.”

“We need an information campaign,” Natasha said from Clint's lap. Everyone looked at her. She shrugged and held up her hands. “You're all right—we are goddamn superheroes, apparently, and the world is in danger. We have to do something to help, it's our job, but this isn't something _we_ can fight. Everyone has to fight it together, but people suck and too many people aren't doing their part.”

“But people look up to us,” Wanda said, nodding as she picked up the train of Natasha's point. “They listen to us—”

“For some reason,” Pietro muttered.

“Shut up.” Wanda glared at her brother. He shrugged.

“We can do like those propaganda reels they used to put in front of movies,” Bucky said from his seat on the floor, leaning back against Steve's knees. “The ones about how _Good Americans_ go along with rationing, and collect scrap metal, and donate their stockings, and all that shit.”

“Exactly,” Natasha said emphatically.

“Yeah….” Sam said slowly. “It's a good idea, and I like it, but let's call 'em PSAs, _not_ propaganda.

There was a chorus of acquiescence: “That's fair.” “Yeah, good point.” “Same difference but sure.” “PSA is better.”

Tony let out a breath. “I guess I'll go make sure my video editing software is up to date.” He stood and gestured around. “If we're gonna do this, somebody's gotta write us material.”

“We can all work on that,” Steve said in a way that sounded more like an order than an agreement.

Clint dumped Natasha out of his lap, got up, and headed for the kitchen. “Cool—I'll make coffee. Sounds like we're gonna need it.”


	2. Stay Home

Steve stood in the compound kitchen, looking casually polished in jeans and an army T-shirt that actually fit.

“Hi,” he said to the camera. “Most of you know me as Captain America, but right now I just want to talk to all of you as Steve Rogers about something that's very important for all Americans. The U.S. and the world are currently facing what may be the most devastating threat we've seen since the World Wars: the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

“Already, this pandemic has shut down businesses, schools, and entire cities—even countries—around the world, and killed thousands.

“It's scary.

“But we can _all_ help protect ourselves and our neighbors, stop the spread of the virus, and save lives.

“We can do this by practicing social distancing and _staying home_. Do not leave your homes unless you have to—don't go out to eat, don't go shopping, don't go to the movies. Come on!” He gestured and grinned. “It's the twenty-first century! You have the internet! Anything you could ever want right there to download, stream, or order for delivery.

“If you do _have_ to go out, keep the trip short, keep your distance from other people, wear a mask, don't touch your face, and wash or sanitize your hands thoroughly and often.

“The point of this is to limit our contact with one another so we can't pass the virus to each other. That's the best way for us to control this crisis. When I was growing up, I was really sickly, I had asthma, I was at high risk for pretty much every disease, and we didn't have drugs to treat or vaccines to prevent most things back then—just like we don't have a vaccine for COVID-19 yet, and we're still trying to figure out what drugs work on it. So whenever an illness went around New York when I was a kid, I stayed home, and my friends and family stayed away. Bucky might visit, but he'd wear a mask, and he wouldn't touch me. If he even thought he _might_ be sick, he wouldn't come at all.

“This situation with COVID-19 is the same way. Most of us won't get seriously sick even if we do catch it—we'll be miserable for a while, but we'll be okay—but there are a lot of people in your community, no matter where you are, who are like me. Old soldiers, kids with asthma, anyone with a weakened immune system or respiratory problems. This disease can kill them, and odds are frighteningly high that it will.

“So we all have to stay home to keep them safe. Even if you don't think you're sick, remember you can be contagious for two weeks before showing symptoms of COVID-19 and some people never develop symptoms at all.

“Don't put the lives of your friends and neighbors at risk. Stay home.

“I and all the other Avengers are self-isolating here at our facility in upstate New York; we'll all be putting up these video PSAs about how you can stay safe, do your part to save the world from this pandemic, and not go too stir-crazy.

“Thank you.”


	3. Wash Your Hands! And Other Ways To Protect Yourself And Others

“Hey, Dr. Bruce Banner here,” Bruce said from behind a lab table, doing his best to approximate Steve or Tony's _I Am Talking To The Public_ face. “We all know that the best thing any of us can do to protect ourselves and each other from the COVID-19 coronavirus is to stay home, but most of us can't stay home all the time. You might still be going to work, or be in a position where you genuinely _have_ to go get things from the grocery store. So let's talk about what steps you can take to prevent viral transmission when you can't stay at home.

“Now, I'm not a medical doctor, and medical personnel have their own strict hygiene protocols that they're following. Please remember that the steps I'm about to tell you are not up to those standards. It takes a lot of training to maintain those kinds of protocols, there are not enough supplies in the world for everyone to do so, and it's not practical for you to try if you don't have that training.

“Moving on, first thing's first—wash your hands thoroughly and often. Washing with soap and water is more effective than using alcohol-based hand sanitizers. The COVID-19 virus is pretty much a tiny bubble made of lipids with DNA inside. As every dish detergent commercial ever made has taught us, soap breaks down grease and fats, which is all lipids are. So, washing with soap destroys those lipid bubbles and kills the virus.

“When you wash your hands, use warm water,” Bruce continued as the scene cut to him washing his own hands in a sink in the lab, “and scrub for at least twenty seconds using proper hand washing form, making sure to get the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails. Look up the W.H.O.'s guidelines on hand washing technique and pick out your favorite timing mnemonic. A lot of people use the Happy Birthday song, but you can use any part of a song, poem, speech, or other quote that takes twenty seconds to sing or say.”

He dried his hands and gave the camera a thumbs up. It cut back to him standing at the lab table.

“Do carry hand sanitizer on you, though, so you can clean your hands when you don't have access to soap and water,” he added sensibly. “And it is reasonable to decide you'd rather avoid the close quarters and communal surfaces of public restrooms and favor hand sanitizer while you're out in public, especially if you know the places you're going don't have touchless faucets.”

Bruce took a breath before continuing. “The next thing to think about is masks. I want to preface these points by saying that it is much more important that medical grade face masks be available to medical staff than it is for you to have them, if you aren't medical personnel, or _maybe_ food service. Hospitals are running out, which is putting the lives of doctors, nurses, and their patients in danger. Please _do not_ go out and buy medical facemasks. If you already have single-use facemasks at home, that's fine, use them, but if you have more than one or two boxes worth, go find out what you can do in your area to donate those extra masks to local hospitals and emergency personnel, _especially_ if they're N95 type masks. It should be printed on the packaging or on the mask itself if it is.

“And know that if you are hoarding masks, I personally am angry with you.” His voice stayed even but his eyes flashed briefly green.

He paused a moment, letting the implications linger, then carried on. “The point of wearing a mask is at least as much to prevent you from getting anyone else sick as it is to keep you from getting sick. Viral transmission is a two-way street, and you can be contagious long before you even know you're a carrier, so it's important to take these steps even if you feel completely fine.

“For purposes of reducing spread in public, lower-grade or even makeshift masks, such as scarves or bandanas tied over the face, will do. If you know how to sew, you can actually make reusable cloth medical masks at home. Some hospitals are taking donations of these home sewn masks, too, so if you're crafty, look into doing that.

“No matter what kind of mask you're wearing, you have to make sure that it fits and you're wearing it properly. It should be snug, covering your nose and mouth, and not slip out of place when you move your head. Most purpose-made masks are adjustable around the nose area; be sure to fit that to your own nose so there aren't any gaps—if you wear glasses like me, your breath should not fog them up when you exhale. With makeshift scarf or bandana masks, this may be unavoidable. If you are using a scarf or bandana, only use ones that are tightly woven fabric. Gauzy, sheer scarves won't do you much good.

“Once you have your mask on, don't take it off, don't touch it. Don't touch your face at all, mask or not, without cleaning your hands first. Don't touch your glasses, either. If they start to slip down your nose, like glasses often do, either let it happen, see if you can get them to slide back into place by tipping your head back, or if you really have to, use the inside of your wrist to push them up.”

He demonstrated, palm facing up and fingers curled, carefully nudging his glasses into place with a bump of his wrist against the point where the arm met the lens frame.

“When you're done with your mask—for instance, when you get home from the grocery store—take it off by the straps or ties without touching the part that goes over your face and without letting the outside surface of the mask touch you. If it's a disposable mask, bag it up and throw it away, preferably outside your home. If it's a reusable cloth mask, a scarf, or bandana, wash it immediately either in a washing machine or by hand with soap.

“When it comes to gloves,” Bruce segued, “most people are better off just washing their hands like we already talked about, and the same admonishment stands as for masks: do not hoard supplies that medical staff need to take care of themselves and their patients, do not go out buying gloves in bulk, if you already have extra, find out where you can donate them to the people who really need them.

“If you're a delivery driver, or a shop clerk, or otherwise know that you're going to be handling things a lot that other people are touching, then gloves are a more necessary precaution. Your workplace may already have protocols in place and, if so, you should follow those.

“Gloves, just like masks, will only protect you if you use them correctly. Wash your hands before you put them on. Put them on before you're going to be touching anything that might be contaminated. Don't take them off while you're still handling things that might be contaminated. Don't touch your face while wearing your gloves. Don't touch things with any part of your body that's unprotected—for instance, don't lean your whole forearm on the handle of your shopping cart—otherwise there's no point in you wearing those gloves and you're just wasting resources.

“Take your gloves off and clean your hands again before touching anything you want to keep clean, like the door handles and steering wheel of your car, and always use proper glove removal technique. If you've ever taken a high school or college chemistry or biology lab, you've been taught proper glove removal, but just in case you've forgotten or haven't taken those classes, let's review.”

It cut to a top-down view of Bruce's now-gloved hands. He narrated as he demonstrated. “Start by pinching the wrist of one glove and pulling up toward your fingers so the glove turns inside-out as it comes off. Hold that glove in your still-gloved hand. Slide a finger of your un-gloved hand under the wrist of your remaining glove, careful not to touch the outside of the glove, and pull it up and off just like the first one so it turns inside out with the other glove now inside.”

Cutting back again, Bruce leaned emphatically on the lab table. “Throw used gloves away as soon as you take them off and _never_ re-use gloves.”

He relaxed a bit and straightened up. “These are the basic personal protective hygiene steps that most people should be aware of. If you want to take extra precautions, maybe because you have someone at home who's in a high-risk group, you can do things like wipe anything you buy down with disinfectant before bringing it into your home, leave non-perishables in a quarantine area somewhere like a garage or sunroom untouched for three days before bringing them inside, and make sure your washing machine is empty and set out towels in your bathroom before you leave the house, then as soon as you get back home put the clothes your wore out into the washer and go shower before touching anything else in your home.

“Most importantly, don't panic. This isn't the zombie apocalypse. For most people, the personal danger of this situation isn't very high. These precautions aren't so much to keep you alive as they are to stop the virus from spreading so it can't get to the people who are most at risk.

“Do your part. Wash your hands. Cover your cough. Save lives.

“From me and all the Avengers, be careful, stay safe, and thank you.”

The video went black for a moment then came back up as a shot of Steve and Bucky, sitting across from each other at the Avengers conference table, studiously tracing facemask sewing patterns onto old T-shirts and other fabric and cutting them out. Tony was watching curiously from the doorway, drinking a bottle of kombucha. “I can't believe you guys know how to sew.”

“Grew up in the Great Depression, Stark,” Bucky said without looking up. “We couldn't afford to go and buy clothes.”

“Besides,” Steve added, reaching to grab another shirt to trace patterns onto, “it's useful. I taught your dad how to sew on a button so Peggy'd stop making fun of him.”

Tony made a sour face.

“I don't even need a thimble anymore,” Bucky said brightly, wiggling the fingers of his left hand.

Whoever was holding the camera snorted with laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About facemasks, including instructions on how to sew them:  
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2020/03/20/calling-all-people-who-sew-and-make-you-can-help-solve-2020-n95-type-mask-shortage/#58ab383b4e41
> 
> Safe glove removal:  
> https://www.globus.co.uk/how-to-safely-remove-disposable-gloves
> 
> Handwashing:  
> https://www.who.int/gpsc/clean_hands_protection/en/


	4. Don't Panic

Natasha and Bucky stood side by side in front of neatly organized shelves, him with one arm around her, his other sleeve empty, both of them dressed in athleasure clothes.

“Hey, I'm Natasha Romanoff—”

“—and I'm James Buchanan Barnes—”

“—and we're coming to you from the Avengers's pantry,” Natasha continued, gesturing behind them, “to talk to you about panic buying and resource hoarding. First though, since people are bound to ask—Buck, where's your arm?”

“In an autoclave,” Bucky said flatly, “being sterilized.”

Natasha wagged an admonishing finger at the camera. “No excuses for not practicing good hand hygiene.”

“No excuses,” Bucky agreed. “You know what else there's no excuse for?”

“Panic buying and hoarding?” Natasha guessed with a knowing half smirk.

“Yup.”

She nodded slowly and took a half step away from him. “You don't think that's a little harsh? People aren't being malicious, they're just scared.”

“Nope.” Bucky crossed his arm over his chest, gabbing onto the opposite shoulder for lack of an elbow to tuck his hand into. “I'm playing the grumpy old man card here—I lived through World War Two and all the rationing that went along with it. I don't take kindly to people taking more than their fair share. And compared to Steve, I'm being extremely reasonable and calm about this.”

“That's true, actually.” Natasha glanced at the camera. “Steve wanted to do this PSA, but he's not very good at keeping his righteous anger over unfairness in check. So you get us.” She put a hand to her chin cutely.

“Mhm.”

“So let's talk about what panic buying _is_ ,” Natasha continued.

“As the name suggests,” Bucky said, “it's people buying things out of panic or fear—especially buying in bulk.”

“Despite Bucky and Steve's lack of patience with it,” Natasha said with a sidelong glance at her partner, “this is a natural and understandable reaction to certain kinds of crises, and it's quite common. The classic example, which at this point is also a joke, is Southerners buying all the bread and milk they can find anytime snow is predicted below the Mason Dixon Line.”

Bucky picked up the thread. “People usually panic buy in response to things like snow storms or hurricanes—major events that you can see coming long enough to know to prepare, and that you know are going to limit your ability to go out and get supplies.”

“The basic impulse is good,” Natasha conceded. “Stock up beforehand to make sure you have enough of the things you need in order to weather the storm—or, in this case, to weather the pandemic and its associated shutdowns.”

“The _problem_ ,” Bucky continued, “is that too many people are buying more than they actually need, and they're buying the wrong things. Most obviously, toilet paper.”

“When people panic buy, they leave the shelves empty,” Natasha explained. “This then creates a sense of scarcity that scares other people into panic buying the same items, causing actual scarcity, preventing people from being able to access the reasonable amounts of basic supplies that they do need.”

“We don't know how long we'll have to practice social distancing,” Bucky said. “In areas with stay at home orders, we don't know how long those may last, and we don't know for sure where new stay at home orders are going to be implemented, but that one, at least, we can predict pretty well.”

“If your city or town has known cases of COVID-19, especially if you're a college town….” Natasha shrugged.

“Expect to be holed up at home for a while,” Bucky concluded. “And it's important to prepare for that.”

“You're not doomsday prepping, though,” Natasha admonished. “You don't need a year or five's worth of anything.”

Bucky nodded. “Take it a month at a time. Think about how many people are in your household and how much you actually consume of various supplies in a month. We have an entire shelf full of pasta here.” He gestured at the shelf behind him, which housed easily two dozen boxes of noodles. “There's roughly twenty people living here. We _always_ use more than a household of three or four. A household of three or four use more than somebody living alone. Buy a _little_ bit more than you otherwise might for the same amount of time, but not much. Remember there are people besides you in your community and leave some for your neighbors. Also think about what you already have at home. Have you had the same bottle of dish soap sitting next to your sink for the better part of a year? Then you probably aren't going to need more. If it's almost empty, go ahead and get _one_ bottle to replace it.”

“Some things, it is reasonable and necessary to buy extra of right now,” Natasha allowed. “A lot of people are having to cook at home a lot more than you usually do, and you're having to do your grocery shopping for a whole month, maybe longer, instead of just for the next week, so you _do_ have to buy more food. Clint's going to do a video on buying, storing, and preparing food smartly during the pandemic, so we're not going to go into that now.”

“You might actually need more of things like toilet paper,” Bucky said, “because you're at home, instead of at work or school using the toilet paper there. That's still not going to be a huge increase in usage. COVID-19 is a respiratory ailment, not dysentery.”

Natasha bit back a laugh.

Bucky continued. “Other things, you might use less of. If you're anything like us here at the compound, you're probably hanging out in the same loungewear or pajamas for a couple days at a time, maybe showering less than you do when you actually leave the house most days, which means you're using fewer towels. In that case, you're doing less laundry, so you're using less detergent.”

Natasha clapped her hands together. “Now, if you, or your friend Karen the Facebook mom, or _your_ mom did freak out and went and bought twenty jumbo bottles of Germ-X or more toilet paper than your household is liable to use by Christmas, that's okay. You, your mom, and Karen aren't horrible people. Keep enough to realistically get you through a couple months—for toilet paper in particular, that's roughly one role per person per week for most people—then return the excess to the store if you can. Otherwise donate it, give it to your friends and neighbors who don't have enough, or if you're really worried about recouping some of what you spent panic buying, resell it. But expect to resell it at a loss.”

“Don't even try to make more than you spent,” Bucky warned. “Price gouging is illegal, and punishments increase during emergencies. Some areas have laws against private individuals making money off of selling emergency supplies, so look into your local laws before trying that at all. If you're not sure, just donate. If you decide to be a greedy jerk, well, Steve's been threatening to throw on a hazmat suit and go deal with some price gougers himself, and I'm inclined to help him, even if leaving the compound means losing my arm to the autoclave for an hour again.”

“Take a breath. Take a step back,” Natasha commanded gently. “Take stock of what you need and what you have. Be realistic and be smart. Stock up and be prepared, but don't panic and don't hoard.”

“We're all facing this together,” Bucky said. “We can all get what we need, but only if we all take only as much as we need.”

“Stand by for Clint's advice on what food to stock up on and how to use it,” Natasha said brightly. “Thank you and goodbye.”

She waved. Bucky stepped forward to cover the camera with his hand—the video went black.


	5. An Admonition from Natasha

After a bit of shakiness the video resolved into Natasha settling into a desk chair, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear while checking that she was in frame. She was wearing the same athleisure wear as she had been in the pantry with Bucky.

“Hey,” she said sharply. “So I've noticed a lot of people—not just Americans, but a lot of Americans—online, including in comments on these videos, complaining that everyone is overreacting, all this self-isolation is pointless, they feel fine, they're healthy, none of this applies to them, they're just going to keep living their lives like they always do and jeez it's such a _pain_ that so many shops are closed or have shortened hours.

“If you're one of those people, I have a question for you. If I gave you this gun—” she picked up a pistol from under her desk “—and I told you that it _might_ be loaded, you have no way to check if it's loaded or not, and you have to hold it, just hold it—you don't have to use it at all, just carry it—for the next month, would you walk up to your neighbor, the cashier at the grocery store, some little old lady, a child, point this gun in their face knowing it might be loaded, and pull the trigger? If that person dropped dead at your feet with their brain coming out of the back of their skull _because you just shot them_ would you be able to live with yourself?

“If the answer is no, then you need to stay the hell at home.” She put the gun down on the desk with a resounding _clack_ and crossed her arms. “By not taking this seriously, not taking precautions, you are endangering lives—you're playing Russian Roulette with a _bomb_. All you have to do to avoid needlessly killing innocent people is stay home, and wear a mask and wash your hands if you have no choice but to go out. It's really not that hard.

“It's public knowledge that I'm a killer and I haven't always been working for the good guys. I've killed people. I've killed people who didn't deserve to die. I've let people die by my own inaction. And as desensitized and callous as I am that weighs on me.” She leaned in to her web cam. “You don't want to find out how that feels. So self-freaking-isolate.” She reached up and the video went black.


	6. Food!

Clint was leaning back against the kitchen island in purple argyle pajama pants and a black T-shirt.

“Hey,” he said, making the salute-like ASL sign for _hello_ as he did. “Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye or 'that random guy with the bow an arrow who hangs out with the Avengers' here to talk about grocery shopping and cooking during these quaran-times.”

He grinned at his own pun, then continued, signing to the camera to follow him. He pushed off from the island and walked over to the pantry and the two large refrigerators that flanked it. “Whether you're ordering your groceries for delivery or suiting up in your mask and gloves to brave the stores, you need to shop according to what kind of storage you have and you preferences as far as what you'll actually cook and what you'll actually enjoy eating.

“Now what I mean by shopping according to your storage is things like, if you have a lot of freezer space—maybe you have a freezer chest in the garage because you hunt, or you have a minifridge leftover from college that you can set cold enough to use as a freezer—then stocking up on frozen food is a good idea. If you _don't_ have a lot of freezer space, then you can't stock up as much on frozen food and need to focus more on shelf-stable things like dry good and canned goods.

“The point is to be able to have enough food in your home that you can make three meals a day for your whole household for at least a week without having to go shopping and without things going bad before you can eat them. That kind of big stock-up grocery run gets expensive fast, and a lot of people aren't working right now or have their hours cut, so it can be hard to afford the kind of stocking up we all need to be doing. To help mitigate that and make things easier for others in your community, if you _can_ afford to buy the more expensive versions of some foods, do so. Leave the less expensive options on the shelves for the people who can't afford anything else.”

He moved farther into the pantry and he segued subjects a little. “If you're not much of a cook or if you're particularly busy right now—working in essential industries, working from home, trying to homeschool your kids, whatever—then you need to focus more on prefab food, stuff you can just shove in the oven or the microwave or stick on the stove for a minute and be done. If you do like to cook or you've decided your quarantine activity is gonna be learning to cook and you have more time, then you should focus more on getting ingredients for cooking from scratch. Everyone should have a mix of both, though, and there are certain stables everyone oughta have on hand.”

He grabbed a box off a shelf, tossed it over his shoulder, caught it as he turned around, and held it out for the camera to see. “Noodles. You want noodles. It doesn't really matter what noodles. Dry pasta is great because it's extremely shelf stable, it keeps forever. I've eaten pasta that was a year past the date on the box and it was fine.

“I know a lot of stores are running low on boxed pasta, so maybe now's the time to try that lentil based pasta you've been eyeing suspiciously for a while, or get some tiny pasta like orzo, stelini, or even couscous that you usually avoid because they're not really _noodles_.” He put the box of pasta back on the shelf. “You can even make your own pasta if you really want to or you're really desperate. But if you have noodles—or pasta, same difference—you have a meal. Cook a whole batch to eat with sauce for spaghetti night, then save the leftover noodles, fry them up in a pan with some butter, scrambled eggs, and cheese tomorrow for lunch.

“On that note, you want eggs unless you're allergic—or vegan, I guess—and you want your dairy staples: butter, cheese, and milk. Butter and cheese both keep a long time in the fridge, especially hard dry cheeses, but milk is iffier. You _can_ freeze milk to make it last longer, just shake it up real good when you thaw it out, but you can also get UHT milk—ultra high temperature—that's been heat-treated so you don't have to refrigerate it at all until it's opened so you can keep it on the counter or in the pantry.” He looked around a little. “I don't think we have any UHT milk for me to show you or I would. Stark's bankrolling us, as usually, and we're doing what I mentioned earlier about buying the more expensive stuff if you can afford it, and, well, Tony can afford _anything_ , so we've been getting direct delivery from a local dairy farm once a week—it's in glass bottles, Steve and Buck are thrilled, it's cute. Anyway, another thing _you_ can do is buy a gallon of milk, buy some powdered milk, once you've used half of that gallon, mix up half a gallon worth of that powdered milk with cold water, add it to the half gallon you had left. Boom, whole gallon of milk again, and I promise it's not weird and watery seeming like if you just reconstitute powdered milk by itself. It's good.

“You also want rice, shelf-stable protein like canned tuna, or these funky little packets,” he held up a pouch of lemon-pepper flavored tuna, “stuff to snack on like crackers and whatever you like on crackers, and bread—which is something else you can make yourself, seriously buy some flour and get your bake on, kneading bread is a great way to work out your frustrations.” He smacked a large bag of flour, caught it as it threatened to fall off the shelf, resettled it, and flashed a thumbs up.

It cut back to Clint in the kitchen, sitting at the island now. “For the sake of your own sanity, it's also important to make it where feeding yourself isn't just a chore and you actually enjoy your food. There's a lot of little things you can do that will help with that a lot even if you're not up to much more than throwing some ramen in the microwave.”

A package of Yaki Soba slid quickly across the counter right past Clint—a slivery blur flashed behind him, kicking up a breeze that ruffled his hair, and Pietro caught the package before is skidded right off the end of the island. “Sorry,” Pietro grinned sheepishly as he handed the Yaki Soba to Clint, “my bad.”

“I knew I should have asked your sister,” Clint teased. He rolled his eyes as Pietro ducked back out of frame, then held up the Yaki Soba for the camera. “If you're gonna have one of these, take two seconds before you make it, dig through your fridge, add a little soy sauce or teriyaki sauce to the water before you cook it, give it some flavor. Toss some shredded carrots, coleslaw mix, or even canned chicken in there. Make this stuff be real food instead of I'm-trying-to-feed-myself-in-my-dormroom sadness with minimal effort.”

He tossed the Yaki Soba out of frame, presumably to Pietro, and a plushy hotdog got tossed back to him. He caught it easily. “Hot dogs are great, easy and fast to fry up in a pan, but kinda meh on their own, so have some potato chips or shove fries or tater tots in the oven. Make some chili and have chili dogs.

“Speaking of chili….” He tossed the plushy back and a jar of Prego pasta sauce slid to him—it stopped a little short and he leaned forward to grab it. “We should have practiced this. Anyway. Jarred pasta sauce is totally fine, but you can use it as a spring board for excellent homemade sauce. Brown some ground meat in the bottom of a pot, put some onion through a food processor, cook it in a big pan, add some garlic, process some more veggies, any veggies, add them and some wine to the onions, once that's cooked down, add it all in with the meat, pour in some store bought sauce, feast like a god. I'm not even kidding, Thor loves this stuff, I made a whole vat of it last week. It's easier to do in bulk and it freezes well. _And_ you can split some off, add beans and spices, make yourself some damn good chili. I'll post a recipe with actual measurements and stuff.”

He slid the jar of sauce back and caught a box of dry noodle soup mix that had been thrown directly at his face. “Make this stuff with more noodles—if your extra noodles take more than 5 minutes to cook, put them in the water first, then add the soup mix when ther's five minutes to go. When it's almost done cooking, like a minute left, pour in a scrampled egg or three. You've got egg drop soup, white people style.”

He tossed the soup box back and Pietro threw a pack of premade pizza crusts to him like a frisbee. Clint fumbled it a little but didn't drop it. “Make your own pizza! You can get these flatbread rounds to use as crust, or you can make your own dough—if you have a bread machine, it will make the dough for you. Then, put whatever you want on your pizza. You can go traditional with red sauce, cheese, and pepperoni, or you can get feta, pre-cooked grilled chicken, olives and artichoke hearts—Tony likes that.” He gestured off camera. “The wonder twins over here like carrots on their pizza; I'm not gonna question it. Natasha made herself a bacon mac'n'cheese pizza for breakfast today.”

He flung the pizza rounds away and, judging by the _thwap_ sound, no one caught them. “Just, _think_ about your food. Have fun, experiment, sing while you cook, plan before you go shopping, don't feel like you have to settle for spaghetti-o's and cereal just because you're stuck at home. And, hey, tell me what you're cooking, what you like on pizza. Stay home, stay safe, stay well fed. From me, and Pietro, and the rest of the Avengers—thank you.”

He signed _thank you_ as well and waved before the video went black.


	7. Recipes

CLINT'S PRIMA VERA PASTA SAUCE

This recipe scales up easily and I rarely make it with less than 3lb of meat. Freeze portions of finished sauce to have fast, easy pasta meals for weeks out of one big day of cooking.

Where the recipe calls for “vegetables of your choice” I usually use a mix of carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower, but you really can use whatever you want. Red cabbage and spinach are both good options, too. You can use pre-shredded or riced veggies to reduce prep. I definitely suggest getting riced cauliflower—frozen and thawed a bit works fine—because cauliflower doesn't behave well in the food processor. Bagged coleslaw mix or (even better) broccoli slaw mix are excellent for this as well.

**Ingredients Per 1lb of Meat:**

Ground meat of your choice

1 large onion—sweet or sharp

~2 cups vegetables of your choice

1 tbsp minced garlic

3 oz red wine (optional)

Salt

Pepper

Onion powder

Garlic powder

Italian seasoning

Olive oil

~2 regular sized jars of spaghetti sauce of your choice, not meat flavored

You may need more sauce if your veggie mix turns out particularly thick, so it's good to have an extra jar or two on hand. If you can't buy that much sauce due to per-customer limits during quarantine, a jar or can of tomato soup can be substituted for purposes of thinning the finished sauce.

**Procedure:**

( _Note, this is a lot easier if you have two people—one to tend the meat, one to deal with the veggies. If cooking alone, pre-process the veggies_ _and set aside_ _before starting the meat._ )

In a large pot, brown the meat. Season with salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder.

Meanwhile, peel, top and tail onions. Run them through a food processor until reduced to coarse mush. Transfer to a large pan or skillet with olive oil over medium-high heat. Put the garlic on top of the onions—do not stir. Allow the garlic to breathe on top while you prep the next of the veggies.

Keep an eye on the amount of liquid in the onion/veggie pan. When it starts to cook dry, add wine and/or water to keep moist.

Prepare veggies, starting with what takes longest to cook, for instance carrots → broccoli → cauliflower. One type at a time, food process all edible parts of the veggies to desired consistency, somewhere between shredded and mush. Include stems for things like broccoli. Add each kind of veggie to the onions, stirring between types.

Once all veggies have been added, allow to cook down until there is no free liquid in the pan.

Add Italian seasoning to meat and stir.

Transfer veggie-onion mix to the pot with the fully browned meat, stir.

Add jarred sauce to pot, stirring to incorporate thoroughly, until desired sauce consistency is reached.

Simmer for however long it takes to make noodles and enjoy!

CLINT'S CHILI CONVERSION

To ~2 quarts of Clint's Prima Vera Pasta Sauce, add:

1 can dark red kidney beans, drained

Chili powder to taste

For spicier chili:

Cayenne pepper to taste


	8. Chapter 8

The camera came on showing the back seat of a moving car, then adjusted itself to focus on a very tired-looking Stephen Strange buckled in and leaning against the door as much as the seatback, red cloak on over his scrubs, hair flattened, hands clasped tightly in his lap, angry red lines dug into his face under his eyes and across the bridge of his nose.

“Hello,” he began with a sigh, “I'm Dr. Stephen Strange—at this point I'm genuinely not sure whether I'm better known as the former world's top neurosurgeon, or as the weird magic man who sometimes works with Avengers. In any case, I'm both, um….”

He closed his eyes for a moment and took a breath while the corner of his cloak brushed a bit of hair away from his forehead of its own accord. He batted the cloak away with a frown, reclasped his hands quickly, and continued. “It's been a while since I've actually practiced medicine because lasting damage from a car crash a few years ago means I am no longer able to perform surgery, among other things, and then, of course I got a little busy becoming a _sorcerer_ ,” He shook his head, smirking a little bemusedly, “but I still have a valid medical license, and this pandemic is an all-hands-on-deck situation, even if those hands are less than steady.”

With another sigh, he held up his hands, palms out, both shaking with uncontrolled tremor, fingers jerking intermittently, the right ring finger in particular inclined to curl in and twitch as though it were repeatedly tapping a keyboard key that wasn't there.

“It's worse when I'm tired or stressed,” Dr. Strange observed to his own hands, turning them over, “and I've just come off a sixteen-hour shift so this is about as bad as it gets.” He rubbed them together then resettled them in his lap. “Of course, by the end of a sixteen-hour shift, I'm far from the only one whose hands are shaking, even if I'm the only one with nerve damage. All medical staff—doctors, nurses, technicians, orderlies, the bureaucratic and janitorial staffs that support us—are going through hell right now. We're at war. We're all running on not enough sleep, not enough food, pretty much relying on adrenalin and stubbornness to get us through the day, _hoping_ that we have the equipment and resources we need.

“I think everyone knows about the PPE shortages we're dealing with, but,” he looked to the ceiling, “I don't think most people understand what that really means, in practical terms. _Yes_ , it does mean that some frontline workers are simply having to go without the equipment they need to protect themselves, but a lot of the problem is subtler than that. Here at Metro-General we _have_ masks and gloves, we're all wearing them, but none of us are sure that we have enough or how long what we have will last—especially since we don't know how long this crisis will last—so we're trying to make each pair of gloves, each mask last as long as we can. That means we avoid having to take them off. You can see,” he shifted to lean toward the camera, “the lines on my face from having a mask on for hours. The only reason I'm not rubbed raw behind the ears is we've been getting donations from crafters of cloth headbands with buttons sewn to the sides to hold the mask loops.”

He leaned back in his seat. “The cloth masks that people are donating don't replace the disposable masks; we wear them as covers over the N95s to protect them, so if something splashes we can change out the cloth cover—which can be washed and reused indefinitely—and keep using the same N95. Not taking the masks off means we don't stop to eat or even drink water as often as we should. And we know that's a bad idea, we know that we have to take care of ourselves in order to take care of others,” he shrugged, “but it's a very difficult balance to strike right now. We're all doing as much as we can. As people, we're at our limits. As a system, we're at our limit. For our sakes, and the sakes of our patients, we need all of you to do what you can, too. Even if you feel like you can't do much, can't do enough, it's okay. We all have our limitations—I physically cannot safely intubate a patient to get them on a ventilator to keep them alive. I'm not a respiratory specialist and never was, I don't have the expertise some of my colleagues have. But I'm a set of eyes, I'm a brain full of knowledge and experience, I'm one more person to spread the workload to so we all have just a little less on us. And _that_ is what we really need—a little less on us

“So please, stay home, even if your state is re-opening and you're technically allowed to go out—listen to Natasha Romanoff.” He grinned a little, but it barely touched his eyes, dead as they were with fatigue. “Natasha, if you're seeing this, you should know that I think the entire nursing staff here has sent your little admonition to everyone they know. In all seriousness, though, until a vaccine is developed, staying home is the best way to reduce the spread of this disease, which is the only way we in the medical field on the front lines can get this situation under control. And, in the meantime, while you're stuck at home and bored, don't do anything reckless and dangerous in the name of keeping yourselves entertained.

“We just had a kid through the ER today with his skull cracked open because he and his roommate thought it would be fun to bounce yoga balls off each other. Well, he bounced right into the wall. A couple days ago, a teenaged girl came in with a botched attempt at an at-home nose piercing. By all means, color your hair and shave stars into the side of your head, but don't do anything that involves sticking yourself with needles. Last week, there was a woman who'd gotten her finger with her pruning shears while she was gardening. Just, be careful. That includes being especially careful driving, when and if you _have_ to go out or go to work. You do not want to have to go to the hospital right now. Hospitals are, by their nature, full of infected people. You don't want to be here, and, frankly, we don't want to have to expend the time, energy, and resources on you. Obviously, if you need medical attention, please get it, we do want to provide help if you need it, but do me a favor, and try to avoid needing it in the first place.”

He glanced out the window. “I am almost home, so I'm going to wrap this up and go get some sleep. Might slightly abuse some temporal magic to get more sleep than I actually have time for.” He shook his head. “Don't clap for us, don't give us empty thanks—stay safe, stay home, flatten the curve, lighten the load on those of us on the front line. Thank you to all of you who are social distancing, thank you to all of you who are donating money and masks and other supplies, thank you to everyone at HHS and DOD who are working on getting us the PPE and ventilators we need to keep doing our jobs, and thank you to all of my colleagues across the country and around the world. This is hard, and we're tired, but we'll get through this, one way or another.”

The video went black.


End file.
